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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The essay doesn’t really answer the question asked.  It sort of dances around it.

Brooks still takes the conversation in an interesting direction. I think he is wrong that pluralism is the answer to the problem he identifies. At the end of the day, the morality and sacrifice of years past stretching into antiquity for the greater good was anchored to something people believed was real:  The Glory of Athens or for the Glory of God and sanctification or even for the glory of baseball.

But, either way, all of those are anchored on in-group/out-group constructs. Which are fundamentally incompatible with pluralism.  Brooks seems to suggest that he wants people to self-sacrifice for the greater good and be anchored to shared morality, but historically people have needed to believe in a cause greater than themselves for that. Pluralism sweeps away the foundation for belief. If everybody’s moral system is worthy of respect or confined to the private sphere than none can actually be true or be brought to the public sphere.

I agree with Brooks that we are not going back on pluralism and open society. But just as war and violence seems to be the fatal flaw of the moral systems of years past, perhaps the  hyper individualism and moral relativism is the fatal flaw of the Enlightenment that cannot be corrected?  [/quote]

NP — thank you for being the first poster who seems to have read the article! I think things will get so out of hand that new societies will form (possibly as new nations or reformed nations) with sets of agreed upon social contracts (morals/ethics) that will exist for a long time (how long, I’m not sure — a century? Two? More?). It won’t be recognizable to us. It’s like a  continental shift is occurring and new continents are forming.

In other words, while I would like us to return stronger as a Union, I suspect we are going to see two or more unions form. These fractures are happening abroad too especially Europe. (I hope we can elect someone appealing who can transcend the existing two party tribalism.)[/quote]

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